


The Mortification of All Flesh

by agatestones



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-19 00:11:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agatestones/pseuds/agatestones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica paused in front of the mirror until her face could reflect the serene, untouchable leadership on which she prided herself. She said to Rachel and Mike's reflections, "Thank you. Your discretion is an asset to the firm."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mortification of All Flesh

"Is she another me?" asked Harvey as he picked up the printout from off his desk. He was sitting in his office smirking at Mike, just like any other Tuesday.

Mike grinned back at him, long since immune to the Harvey Specter Smirk. "No," he said. "She's another _Jessica_."

"What's the catch?"

"I'm sure you can overcome it." He paused, amusement and anxiety warring in his chest. The amusement won out. "She isn't at Harvard."

"What," said Harvey, and dropped the pages back on his desk.

"She is," said Mike, "at Columbia."

"What," Harvey said again.

"She did get _into_ Harvard, but: custody arrangement," Mike told him, savoring the knowledge and the way it would affect Harvey. "Her mother died and she fought her father for custody of her two younger brothers. Part of the agreement was that she couldn't move out of state."

As Mike had known it would, that biographical detail piqued Harvey's interest. "Is she going to have to skip out on work to take little Talbot and Barouche to dance lessons?"

Mike laughed. "Chris and Jim, and no, they're seventeen and nineteen now."

Harvey paused, a mean little twinkle in his eye. "And what makes you think she's a second Jessica?"

Probably this meant Jessica was in the hallway. Mike had learned a thing or two over the years. "Aside from the whole devastatingly brilliant angle? She wears the kind of shoes that you don't want planted in your ass."

"Please tell me they're Louboutins," said Jessica, her head in the door. Mike turned and saw her delighted little smile and returned it, a little dazzled even now to be the focus of her attention.

"No, uh, actually she's kind of -- they were spit-shined combat boots. She disclosed upfront that she cannot walk in heels."

"Pity," Jessica sniffed, and turned to go. Over her shoulder she said, "Perhaps Donna can help on that front."

The intercom on Harvey's desk buzzed to life. "Louboutins for everybody!" came Donna's squeal. It was still a pleasure to get to make Harvey chuckle, even now. Even if Mike didn't get to deliver the punch line.

"I don't know," said Mike, shaking his head sadly. "I don't think they make them in my size."

It was even better to watch him laugh when you _did_ get to deliver the punch line.

*

And so Mike was going to be replaced, easy-peasy. He'd been at the firm for almost three years and was no longer riotously blundersome. In fact, he was getting a promotion and his own office. Harvey needed someone new to yell at. It was time to hire summer associates. It made sense. And if anybody could yell back at Harvey Specter, it was a stubby little slip of a girl named Kelly Berencz. She came up to Mike's collarbone and wore cheap mall studs in her ears and had done all the tailoring on her pantsuit herself. And she was still wearing combat boots on her first day as a Pearson & Partners summer associate, because her first paycheck hadn't cleared and she didn't think that sneakers would be appropriate.

She stopped by Mike's brand new office a little after lunch, having worked for the firm for four hours. "So Mr. Specter --"

"Oh my god, just call him Harvey," Mike interrupted her. He had to shift a pile of paperwork off his desk to see her when she sat down; he hadn't had time to get anything so civilized as file cabinets yet. Actually _all_ that was in his office was a desk and two chairs; the walls were bare. Some imaginary day in the future when he had free time he would be expected to decorate it as befits a member of Pearson  & Partners; in the meantime his only decoration was the view. Somehow Harvey had wrangled him a tiny sliver of east-facing window. "You make him feel old as it is."

"Why, how old are you?" asked Kelly, her ponytail bobbing behind her.

"Let's just say I'm not young enough to be his kid, and you are, technically. Besides," Mike reminded her, "you want him to see you as a potential equal. If you don't have the opportunity to kick his ass in the first week of working for him, all he'll remember is that you didn't have the --"

"Don't say balls," Kelly told him, which was exactly what Mike had been about to say.

"-- _guts_ to even call him by his first name."

She had round cheeks and a pert little chin, and her sleeves were too long. She looked younger than she was. But she bored those brown eyes of hers into Mike as fearless as if she could not look over his shoulder down into Midtown Manhattan. "So this is hazing, right? The case he gave me?"

She tossed it on the bare space on Mike's desk. He glanced at it, and was pleased to discover it entirely unfamiliar. "That he _didn't_ try to rope me in on it means he's expecting real work out of you. He'll probably have me check it when you're done, though. What makes you think it's hazing?"

"Product liability on boner pills?" she asked, with one eyebrow raised.

"Dude," said Mike. He delved into the file. "That is awesome."

Kelly didn't seem to think so. She tolerated a few minutes of his flipping through the enclosed pages, quiet in her chair. Mike recognized the summary style from one of his fellow associates: the case was in final negotiations, so of course it had come to Harvey to close. Mike looked up and noted the frown on her face. 

"Did you tell him I'm a lesbian?"

"No, of course not," Mike said. "A, it's not relevant to the work. And B, official non-discrimination policy, that I know you got in your little welcome packet. Also C, he sleeps around, but not with his own subordinates. I'd be more worried if you were straight, actually -- that he'd have to find a way to turn you down without screwing up your working relationship."

He winced as that got out of him mouth, but Kelly only gave him an ironic little shrug. "And now I'm working on defective boner pills. Love-Eez, I swear, there is not a more skeevy product name this side of the Fleshlight."

"Hey, at least you're working for the plaintiffs. So, what, so they cause it to turn black and fall off, so what?" 

Kelly chuckled a little. "Lucky consumers report uncontrolled erotomania, with secondary bruising, friction burns, rupture, misdemeanor public exposure charges, and in one case a bad fit with a wall-vac slot. Unlucky ones: backne, emotional outbursts, nosebleeds. Assault charges."

"Yikes. Well, if they marketed it as a natural supplement they don't have to run their claims past the FDA."

"They do when it's a controlled substance. Off-the-shelf samples turned up three different pretestosterone hormones and a stimulant called," and she paused to enunciate the unfamiliar chemistry, "methyl-ene-dioxy-pyro-vale-rone."

"Ohhh," groaned Mike. "That's an analogue of Ecstasy." Kelly recognized _that_ name, obviously, but not with the knowing look that indicated she had any experience with it. "And it _just_ got a Schedule I rating last fall."

"Wait, like cocaine Schedule I?" Her face was a mask of shock.

"Yeah, as illegal as it gets," said Mike, and decided at once never to tell her about his pothead years. "There is no reason on the planet for that to be in an over-the-counter supplement."

"Isn't that assault by deception? Why isn't this Bilzerian guy up on felony charges yet?"

Kelly would make a great prosecutor. That was part of why Mike had picked her: her ability to remind Harvey of himself. He told her: "Yet is the operative word. With this chemical report, he'll probably go down on federal trafficking charges too."

"I am really not clear on his endgame." She gestured at the file. "If it was a sugar pill, sure, fine, scam late-night couch-desperadoes. But mind-altering substances?"

Mike flipped forward to the affidavits filed by the defendant. Teddy Bilzerian's counterclaims were outlandish, grandiose, and paranoid, the moreso because they were neatly typed and spelled properly and vetted by a lawyer. "Uh -- this is not a guy with an endgame in mind."

"I guess it's true," said Kelly, and shook her head. "They never think they'll get caught."

"I guess," Mike said, as she stood up to get back to work.

*

"So Jim and Chris are at home?" They were walking together, briskly, but not so briskly as to admit they were late.

"They're not babies," said Kelly. She was a lot shorter, so Mike's idea of brisk might have been more like a trot for her. "So I'm really the only one who isn't from Harvard?"

"You're a pioneer," Mike told her. "You'll knock their socks off."

"Easy for you to say," she told him back. "You're from Harvard."

Mike chuckled to himself, and didn't answer. It was possible he'd provided Jessica unasked with a decade of _US News & World Reports_ rankings, which showed that Harvard Law was no longer #1, and hadn't been for a while. It was not for him to know whether she had decreed the Harvard rule void on her own, or put it to a vote among the senior partners. Anyway, Kelly was in. She'd be stared at and ribbed and probably dressed down by a couple of old guys in bow-ties, but Mike was pretty sure she'd succeed. "You'll knock their socks off," he said again, and opened the door for her to join the group of summer interns.

There were about 50 of them, and probably forty would be hired when they graduated the following year. For now, they were to work all summer, learn how the law functioned in practice, and be wooed with all the bribery and glam of which a New York biglaw firm is capable. They didn't literally get handed diamond tiaras on their first day, but only because Donna was not in charge of the summer associate program.

What they did get was a reception on a lovely June evening in a museum closed down just for them to roam, and lots of alcohol and teeny tiny lamb chops passed around on trays. They'd rented out the Bleecker Museum for the night: Pearson & Partners didn't go small when it wooed its future associates. It was hilarious -- it was a little insulting. They had to see the velvet glove now, Mike knew, because once they started as associates for real, it was Louis Litt's iron fist -- well, maybe it was a tin fist, but with sharp little edges at the joins -- for 12 hours a day. The senior partners mingled and chatted up the nervous interns and decided their entire fates based on how self-assuredly they sipped their cocktails.

Mike ushered Kelly in and was pleased to see that about half the group of interns was women, and of those at least a quarter had no idea how to wear a suit. So Kelly was in good company. All the rest wore heels, though (and most of them wore skirts), and the result was that Kelly was the shortest person there. No actual associates were there, of course. They had no excuse not to be working. Mike noted Jessica's foreboding gaze from across the atrium and waved the signature forms in his left hand to reassure her.

Rachel stood in the middle of the summer associate gaggle. Down from Cambridge, as bright and prickly as she'd been when she was a paralegal. Her suit fit her perfectly. She held the huge balloon of a red wine glass in one hand, comfortable, while most of the other women sipped shyly at whites. The men mostly held mixed drinks, Rob Roys or whatever the popular thing was these days. Mike remembered Harold's penchant for Cosmos, and hid a chuckle.

"Kelly, crowd of people, crowd of people, you've all met Kelly, right?" 

Aforementioned crowd was evenly split between people who scrutinized her carefully as competition and people who disdained her.

"Hey," said one fellow from the back with a crewcut, "is it true you're working on the defective sex supplements case?"

"Oh, dude," chorused the kid beside him, who looked like the kind of person who wore boat shoes unironically. "My associate was telling me about that case. Guy got his dick stuck in a _wall vac_."

Laughter, a bit nervous from the smarter ones but full-blown guffaws from guys in back. Kelly caught her fingertips in her too-long sleeves and stared at them in antagonistic silence.

"Two-hour stiffy? Sign me up!" said Crewcut. 

"Oh yeah, there's a couple of those paralegals --" Boat Shoes began.

Mike made note of his face and was also surprised to make note of how that face wilted under his disapproval. Mike was not used to being able to make anything wilt, except houseplants. "Hey guys," he said, a little dazzled at his position of power. "That whole confidentiality thing, kind of important. They don't make you memorize extensive ethics rules just for fun."

Kelly glanced at him, startled. Mike liked to think he hadn't intervened solely on her behalf, but to rescue the rest from their own stupidity; but really, he'd mostly intervened on her behalf.

"Oh, and for the record?" he addressed the whole group of summer associates. "Under no circumstances do you hit on the paralegals. They've all heard it before, and will saw you off at the knees and then report it to the Senior Partners. So just don't."

Rachel stared at him, that funny look of hers that was half angry and half amazed that such a bottom-feeding creature could stand on its hind legs and talk. He gave her an awkward smile as she approached.

"Mike," she said.

"Rachel, this is Kelly. Kelly, Rachel." They eyed each other carefully. Rachel was taller in the first place, and wearing four-inch heels besides; she made Kelly look like a kid.

"I don't remember you from Harvard," said Rachel.

"I don't go to Harvard," said Kelly, in exactly the same quasi-accusatory tone.

"Oh," said Rachel, and glanced at Mike.

"Long story," he said. "Maybe you two can talk it out while I go get a John Hancock from Harvey. Is he here?"

"I saw him with Goldberg in the lower mezzanine. Looked like they were arguing; I'm not sure you should break in on them just yet."

Mike rolled his eyes. Goldberg again. They'd been arguing since April. Rachel recognized that eyeroll and shook her head, and started explaining the ridiculous personal antagonisms of the senior partners to Kelly.

He stuck his free hand in his pocket and glanced around while the two of them worked through the conversational basics behind him. He was not at all bitter that he'd managed to get hired straight to work, without any of this summer associate luxury. Not having gone to law school at all, sure, whatever, but not having been invited to any swanky, no-strings receptions? Unacceptable. The Bleecker Museum was long and skinny and tall and way modern, the exterior a series of piercing migraines from afternoon sun bouncing off the windows. The inside was all cool steel and glass, with three tiers of gallery space each looking down into the next. Mike examined the indifferent contemporary art on the walls and suspected the museum made a lot more dough holding receptions than it did from ticket sales.

"Hey Mike, you would know." Rachel gestured at him with her wine glass. "The summer rumor is that Harvey actually grew up in the midwest and is faking his New York cred. But I thought -- Is Harvey really from Ohio?"

"Ha, no," said Mike, and instantly sourced that rumor to Louis Litt. Harvey would laugh himself into a coronary over it, and then he would find a way to make Louis regret it, all without stating where he _did_ grow up. Mike tapped his papers against his thigh and eyed Kelly and Rachel and decided what the hell. "Lower East Side. Not the, you know, the East Village Annex Lower East Side, I mean what it was 30 years ago. You haven't lived till you've heard a man in a $5000 suit cuss out the traffic in outdated Nuyorican slang. With all the swear words in Yiddish, for some reason. Maybe Yiddish just has the best swear words."

Kelly's eyebrows shot up in fascination, or disbelief. "Don't the Beastie Boys come from the Lower East Side?"

"MCA's from Brooklyn," Mike recited. "Weren't you born after they'd had about three platinum albums?"

She laughed at him, maybe the first time she'd laughed all day. Rachel watched her laugh, and watched Mike watch her laugh. She caught Mike's eye and smiled at him, as if no time had passed, as if they were still sparring in the library after-hours. He hadn't seen her in more than a year. Mike only realized how much he'd missed her when she was back in his life.

And anyway, Kelly needed all the allies she could get.

*

Goldberg came stomping down the stairs muttering her distaste for That Insufferable Prick, and that was how Mike knew that Harvey was available for a signature. He led Kelly up the stairs and they found him leaning over the steel railing, with a view of the crowd below.

He looked comfortable all by himself, clinking the ice cubes in his glass. Ice cubes -- that meant no Scotch. (Probably the bartenders didn't have his brand, and Harvey was not a man to compromise.) He seemed to like that position, an elbow on the railing and all his minions (plus several colleagues and _Jessica_ ) arrayed below him. He nodded at Mike as they hit the top step. Harvey put down his glass on one of the trays discreetly arrayed at the corners of the room, and wandered towards his associates as if he had all the time in the world.

"Work no longer interesting enough?" he asked Mike, although he had to see the folder in Mike's hand. Without any prompting he accepted the pen and scrawled his name in the flagged spaces.

"If I run, I can make the last Fedex pick-up," Mike told him, pert. "And then I can go back to your office and draw smiley faces all over your business cards."

"So glad you find something to occupy your time," said Harvey, and rolled his eyes.

Kelly watched them jab at one another, an analytical frown on her face. Mike took back the pen and folded back the folder and realized that neither party was ready for him to leave.

It should never be said that Harvey did not like attention, and the idea that someone disapproved of him was perversely the attention he liked best. He stood there under Kelly's gaze in one of his fine light-gray summer suits that made him seem golden in the early-evening light. The jacket was open and he slid one hand into a pocket, confident and casual. His necktie was a brown-and-red pattern that picked up his eye color and complemented his pocket square. No detail was out of place. He looked perfect and -- overwhelming. Mike wondered, suddenly, whether Harvey had dressed this morning in hopes of winning over his summer associate, or intimidating her.

They stood facing each other like fencers waiting for the signal to raise their swords. Mike might as well have been invisible, or in a commentator's booth on the other side of the room, narrating events he was helpless to affect.

"The rumors are already circulating," he interjected. "I haven't heard any about me yet, but --"

Harvey smirked without turning aside his gaze. "What makes you think you warrant summer rumors?"

"My winning personality," said Mike with a grin, but neither Harvey nor Kelly laughed. The silence grew too long even for Mike to pretend it wasn't happening. He was opening his mouth to chivvy them awkwardly on to another meaningless cocktail party topic when Kelly talked over him.

She had not stopped frowning. "You're wearing my car," she said.

If Mike had ever said that, then Harvey would have quipped right back at him, _What kind of cheap suit do you think this is?_ or _My other suit is a motorcycle_ or something snappy and just on the edge of mean but delighted underneath at the challenge. To Kelly, he said nothing.

He gazed at her thoughtfully, the kind of face he made when he suspected a rogue clause in a contract but hadn't found it yet. Kelly clarified into the silence: "Mike said your suits cost $5000. Is that really true?"

"A little more than that," Harvey answered, with uncharacteristic modesty. And then, a small riposte, "Don't listen to Mike about fashion. He still thinks that socks come from Walmart."

It was a near-certainty that Kelly _also_ bought her socks at Walmart, but she ignored Harvey's wit altogether. "How did you handle that transition, when you still had some regular suits mixed in with the nice ones? Or did you just save up and replace everything all at once?"

"I got six at once," Mike said quickly. "But I started out with none, so."

Harvey was eyeing his summer associate with a neutral expression, so neutral it scared Mike. If Harvey decided that he hated Kelly, this summer was going to suck. Mike had done all that work to find someone who wouldn't be scared of Harvey, who would question him and backtalk him and intrigue him the way Mike could, and had never wondered whether Harvey would be scared of _her_.

Not scared. Just unwilling to be mean to her the way he was to Mike. Kelly stood before him in a ridiculously unstylish, badly-fitted pantsuit -- and ohhh Mike realized belatedly that it looked five years out of style because it _was_ , because it had been her mother's and laid aside after her mother got sick, and had only emerged from the closet just now because Kelly hadn't really needed a suit since the funeral -- and Harvey said not one word about her awkward clothes. Her combat boots instead of heels, her girlish ponytail: Harvey had foregone all opportunities to rib her about it.

If he couldn't get under his associate's skin, he might never trust her. There must be other ways on this planet to inspire that massive and unspoken loyalty that Mike enjoyed, but if there were, Mike didn't know them.

"You'll be paying off your loans," Harvey said, serious. "You --"

"I'll be paying off my loans," Kelly interrupted, "and a mortgage my dad stops contributing to in ten months, and I'll have two kids in college by then." Her expression was matter-of-fact, but she'd spoken more sharply than Mike had heard _anyone_ speak to Harvey. Even Jessica managed to chide him in private most of the time.

"Then presumably you won't be spending your first-year bonus on a Bugatti Veyron, or sex tourism in the Caribbean," Harvey told her testily.

"I don't think they do sex tourism for dykes," she said, her cheeks red. Mike couldn't tell whether she was joking, but Harvey laughed.

"Probably not," he said, and gave a _what can you do_ shrug. "Dad going to be no help on tuition?"

Mike recognized the subtext of that question and recognized that Kelly would not. "No," she said, and shut her mouth firmly. Her own subtext was written all over her face, and Harvey was an excellent reader.

He did something interesting just then: he turned away. He didn't pounce or interrogate or even raise an eyebrow. His back to Kelly, his hands in his pockets, his gaze impassive over the balcony and out the long vertical windows, he said, "Teddy Bilzerian called six times this afternoon. He's obviously not a fan of the settlement negotiations. Mike, you're escorting Kelly home."

More subtext for Mike to decode: Donna's screening incoming calls; her free rein to hang up on the crazies; her ability to assess the kind of crazies who were all talk and the ones who were more than talk. He glanced at Kelly and she was puzzling out some of the same inferences, a worried expression on her face.

"Ray'll drive you," Harvey said.

He would never have offered Mike a ride home at this stage in their relationship. Of course, Mike had been a pothead and a drug mule when they'd met. He kept that off his face as he nodded, first to Harvey's back and then at Kelly.

"Ray's awesome," Mike told her, as if all the summer associates got escorted home to safety. "I'm impressed you get to meet him so soon. I'll be back at 9 when the reception's over."

*

Mike did really have a whole evening of work left to do (which now he needed to get done before 9), so he was on his way down the stairs at a reasonable clip when he noticed the look on Jessica's face below. She stood like Galatea in a ray of late sunlight, a wine glass curled in one hand, but with a wary line between her brows and her lips pressed together as if she'd just gotten wind of an unethical deal. Mike followed her gaze and saw a pair of summer associates whose names he hadn't learned yet side by side on a little upholstered bench, hand-in-hand and giggling with one another.

As Mike watched they began to kiss, not like after a first date but like they were desperately interested in the state of one another's tonsils. A glance at Jessica revealed the same surprise Mike felt. He skittered down the last of the stairs and up to her side. "Uh, you want I should go break that up?"

"I like to think my senior partners hire associates with manners," said Jessica drily, and gestured for him to proceed. But before he could go, that gesture turned into a hand on his elbow, grip tight. " _What_ are they doing."

_They_ were not the couple aforementioned, but two senior partners in the middle of the atrium, standing close together and... weirdly intimate. They seemed to be whispering in each other's ears, Stanislaus with his shoulders a-heave and Mackinaw grasping her colleague from Estates tightly. Stanislaus and Mackinaw were not known to even like each other (Stanislaus wore bow-ties; Mackinaw drove a Hummer), and also, both of them were married. To other people. Mike felt the bones in his elbow grind together under the pressure of Jessica's shock.

"Okay," said Mike, and pulled his elbow free. "Maybe they've had too much to drink. I'll --" and he crossed the room to intervene, catching Rachel's eye and gesturing her over. She was staring too (and she should; she got along with Stanislaus pretty well) and without a pause she put down her wine glass and strode towards the situation. Her heels provided auditory warning of her approach, but the senior partners were busy with each other. Mike felt every eye on them, and felt the bloom of second-hand humiliation in his cheeks, and was at Rachel's side as she stepped in.

"Jerry," she said to Stanislaus, with that coy-persuasive voice she used when she needed a favor. "It's been forever since I've seen you. How _is_ Margery doing?" 

Mike took the opening she'd provided and pulled Mackinaw away a foot or two. "Cathy, if you think Jessica isn't watching, you're --" With his hands on Mackinaw's shoulders, with the woman's face right in his (and breath completely clear of alcohol fumes), Mike discovered suddenly that he was out of his depth. Mackinaw was giving him _bedroom eyes_. It was crazy. Mike had only ever run finance figures past her, and also she was fifty years old, and now -- "Uh, maybe you need a glass of cold water. Let's go see about that."

"I thought you'd never ask," said Mackinaw, and led Mike by the hand toward the restrooms. Mike swallowed down any protest (because at least they would be out of public view), mollified by the knowledge that Rachel was right behind him, with Stanislaus, whose elderly hands wandered in alarming ways. Rachel fended him off effectively and without ever losing her playful composure, a skill Mike had never until now needed and envied terribly.

Rescue came in the form of Jessica Pearson and a security guard, stationed at the bathroom door. The two senior partners, led inside, quickly found themselves caught in zip-tie handcuffs, and attached to (separate) bathroom stall doors. "Cathy, Jerry, we'll talk tomorrow about your futures at this firm," Jessica spat at them, and then paused in front of the mirror until her face could reflect the serene, untouchable leadership on which she prided herself. She said to Rachel and Mike's reflections, "Thank you. Your discretion is an asset to the firm."

Mike touched his cheeks, and felt their heat. Jessica left and he took deep breaths one two three, and headed out. In the atrium, he could hear Jessica's voice being raised again, but right in front of him was another crisis: Louis Litt.

He was standing in front of a sculpture that looked like a giant corn dog made of marble, with tears leaving shiny tracks down his face. He dashed his glass against the floor tiles and sobbed, "Rachel, have you ever seen anything so beautiful?!"

Rachel eyed Mike and Mike eyed Rachel and Mike was sooooo not going to get involved. "It's lovely," Rachel said at last, without moving any closer to Louis.

"It's THE most tragic statement on the fleeting nature of youth! How do they _know_? It's like this artist can see into my soul!" And Louis turned away from the giant corn dog, arms wide, pacing towards them for a hug. Mike felt only a little bit guilty about stepping to the side so that Rachel was the only available target; she was enveloped in Louis's thick arms and he bawled on her shoulder.

As Mike stepped aside he skidded a little on an ice cube from Louis's discarded drink. Suddenly a light bulb came on in his brain. "Louis? Louis! What did you have to drink? Louis, talk to me."

Rachel's eyes went big and she and Mike stared at one another. "You think somebody spiked his drink?"

"I think that's three senior partners losing their marbles all at once," said Mike, and that was when the whole mental chandelier lit up. "Oh shit, oh man, the psychopath from the Love-Eez case would totally pull something like that."

"Why are you so mean!" Louis howled, grasped Rachel ever more tightly. 

"Did you have a mixed drink?" Mike asked, and yanked fruitlessly on his shoulder, "Or the wine? Glass of water?"

"It was _sparkling_ water, you fivehead, now go away and let me contemplate my misery in peace!" Helplessly enmeshed in the (so-far platonic) embrace of Louis Litt, Rachel made a face at Mike.

"Right," said Mike, and ran back down the hallway.

*

The bartenders were staring. Right in front of their station, Boat Shoes and Crewcut were fondling one another, about one instance of manual dexterity away from full-on pants-down sexuality. They had drunken grins on their faces and no apparent awareness of their audience. The bartenders did not know what to do, but with two young men fooling around in front of their station, and blocking the way for any other potential drinkers, they didn't have to do much of anything. Mike elbowed his way up to them and commanded them to stop serving.

"Yeah," said the lead bartender, distractedly. "Sure." He snapped his fingers at his underlings and they shut their gaping mouths.

"You, you," and Mike pointed at them, "Go around the room and take away people's glasses. All of them. I don't care what they're drinking, how much is left. Just take it away and bring them all over here. You, I need you to set aside a couple samples of whatever you're serving. Water, sparkling water, limes, everything. Who else here is sober?"

"What in blazes is going on," came a crusty voice behind him. He spun and discovered Sandra Goldberg. And Mike had thought she was irritated _earlier_.

"They've been drugged," Mike said unnecessarily, and inserted himself bodily between the two summer associates. Which was, he realized after he'd done it, literally an awkward position to be in. He caught both of Crewcut's hands as they tried to undo Mike's necktie.

"What kind of a puerile summer associate prank IS this?" Goldberg stormed. "Jessica has _got_ to fire these two."

"Yeah, we just got done tying up Jerry Stainslaus for the same thing," said Mike, as he hip-checked Crewcut just far away enough not to have to feel any unfortunate, ah, protuberances in the midst of rescuing the kid's virtue. No level of frat-boy assholery deserved such a humiliation. "You could help me restrain them before it gets any more out of hand."

"I?" asked Goldberg, grammatical to the last. She crossed her arms as if she would never dream of assisting an associate in her life.

Miraculously, Jessica took that moment to swoop down on the bartending station. "What in the hell did you put in those drinks," she demanded of the bartender, who raised his hands as if she was arresting him.

"Not a fucking thing, ma'am," he told her, white-faced. "I gotta reputation to uphold just like anybody." He hunted up the manifest of the catering order for her to see.

Boat Shoes managed in that moment to jostle Jessica at the elbow. "YOU." She pointed at him (down at him; as usual, she was the tallest person present). "Don't move."

And the best part was, _he didn't move_. He stood there with one hand in the air and a lustful _Yes ma'am_ on his lips as he waited patiently for Jessica to peruse the water-stained sheets on the bartender's clipboard. It made it a hell of a lot easier for Mike to handle Crewcut. Inspired by the kid's own fumbling, Mike took off Crewcut's necktie and bound his hands together with it. He left the skinny end like a leash for someone to hold the kid on, and handed that leash to Goldberg.

"You want me to babysit this child?" Goldberg scoffed.

Jessica muttered to herself, "It can't be in the catering, hardly any of the food has been passed yet."

Mike was busy loosening the knot on Boat Shoes's necktie as well. He obligingly leaned into Mike (more unfortunate protuberances, Jesus), but didn't break the pose in which Jessica had commanded him to still.

"Yes, please, babysit this child whose decision-making skills are obviously impaired," Mike snarled, and yanked the necktie tighter than was probably necessary around Boat Shoes's wrists. "Don't you think Page Six would have a field day punning on the name Pearson & Partners?"

The venom in Jessica's brief glance was nearly enough to knock Mike dead on the spot. She didn't contradict him, though: she knew her shitty tabloid puns as well as anyone. She spun on one heel with the bartender's clipboard still in hand and stalked away to talk to the purveyors of teeny tiny lamp chops.

Huffy, Goldberg held the skinny ends of two neckties with the offended dignity of a socialite forced to look away while her diamond-collared spaniel shits on the sidewalk. Mike shook himself, rolled his eyes, and headed on to the next embarrassment landmine.

*

Management is not all glamour and dazzlement; it's also a lot of irritation and a healthy dollop of frustrated ingenuity. Jessica Pearson's ingenuity seemed to involve zip-ties used as handcuffs, and on Mike's example neckties when she ran out of zip-ties. She also ran out of doorknobs to tie people to, and started tying them to railings on the staircase. In this she was assisted by most of the senior partners present, two security guards, four bartenders, five caterers, Mike, Rachel, and most of the female summer associates (but none of the male ones, for some reason). Some of them were a bit more vengeful when tying knots than others.

( _Someone_ broke into the janitorial closet and started swatting victims with a long-handled broom when they got unruly. Mike isn't saying who that person was, but the name starts with a G and ends with an -oldberg.)

"This is not the summer associate experience I was expecting," said Rachel, and blew a lock of hair out of her face. Her cheeks were bright and she stood back from the last of the tied-up victims with her hands on her hips. "I mean, I knew Jessica was good in a crisis, but --"

Mike had set aside his jacket (and had no idea where the folder he'd arrived with had gone) but managed to keep his tie around his own neck and not around anybody's wrists. He waited for Rachel to finish that thought, pretty sure he was going to agree with it anyway, but Rachel stood there, head down, an accusing frown mashing up her features.

"What," he said.

Rachel kicked something on the floor and it skidded, a clear gleam, across the travertine expanse toward the wall. "Oh no," she said.

It was an ice cube. They were here and there on the floor, from dropped or spilled drinks, and if they hadn't melted by then they'd surely be swept up with the glass shards. Rachel found another, and kicked it, and raised her shocked face to Mike.

"Wait, the ice?" he asked, and even as he did so the logic cascaded into place. Ice came in bags, not sealed bottles. Ice was everywhere, unremarkable, flavorless. Ice was the perfect vehicle for a water-soluble drug: its slow melt even provided a time-release feature. "Oh no is right."

So there they were, Rachel and Mike, crawling around on the floor trying to pick up ice cubes with their bare hands. Mike did most of the crawling, because he was not wearing a skirt and four-inch heels, but before he'd been at it long Jessica stomped up to him and told him to stop.

"You don't know if it absorbs through the skin," she cautioned, and handed him a paper towel to blot his knees. "Anyway we have bowls of it over at the bartending station."

Mike grimaced. "I don't know the chemistry in depth. I only read a quick summary of the case this morning. I mean, I presume this is the Love-Eez guy, inflicting his revenge."

"Harvey is going to have a field day with this," interjected Rachel, with a badly-hidden chuckle. It was true: Harvey was going squash Teddy Bilzerian into a deeply regretful pancake. Harvey was never so happy as when he could exercise his prosecutorial dudgeon to destroy the opposition.

"Where _is_ Harvey?" Jessica asked, only half-idly. Mike opened his mouth, Spidey-sense tingling. Jessica swung her head around, eyeing the crowd of victims and rescuers. "Oh god, is he off sexing up one of my summer associate class?"

"Pretty sure not," said Mike, alarmed. Harvey was not in the rows of trussed and writhing lawyers in the main atrium. Harvey was not exclaiming hysterically about the heartbreak of the world over on the couches, either. Harvey was unaccounted for. "Uh, I need a couple more paper towels. Be right back."

Mike left Jessica with Rachel and _ran_ toward the restrooms in search of the second staircase up to the mezzanine. Harvey might be in any one of the little offices, conference rooms, and nooks in the back of the building. It wasn't like he would respect a Do Not Enter sign, especially not if he were drugged. He might be in tears somewhere, or ranting violently or -- the other person Mike hadn't seen was Kelly Berencz. If Harvey was in some corner having sex with her, with or without her enthusiastic participation, that would be Very Bad. Mike ran faster.

Hissing rather than calling Harvey's name, Mike searched the unlocked offices as quickly and efficiently as he knew how. Under the desk? Behind the file cabinet? No? On to the next one. Mike found a bathroom and searched that, and then a humming server room (locked), and then he turned a corner and discovered Kelly Berencz sitting on the top of a wheeled sound deck which was crammed against a wall. She was cross-legged, and cross-looking, and at the sound of Mike's footfalls she stiffened up in a pose of terrified dignity. "You can't come in," she said.

She was still wearing her suit jacket. She hadn't taken any clothes off at all, and she wasn't looking at Mike like he'd suddenly turned into Fabio. There was no sign of tears. "Are you okay?" he asked, gasping.

"You have to stay away," she said from atop her perch. Even as small as she was, the effect made her quite a bit taller than Mike. He stared at her and after a moment perceived that her head was in the center of a frame. A doorframe. She was sitting on a sound deck right in front of the closed door of a closet. It wasn't the strangest behavior Mike had seen all night, but close.

"Everyone else is downstairs," Mike told her. "Jessica is in control. We're sorting things out."

"Doesn't matter," said Kelly. "You can't be here."

"Says who?"

She blanched.

"Says _Harvey_? Oh my god, Kelly, what did he do to you?"

"Nothing!" she hissed. "Keep your voice down, he can hear you."

The closet door thumped, hard. Kelly and the sound deck rolled away a few inches and Mike noticed a big paper clip hanging out of the keyhole in the doorknob. It was bent and contorted and jiggled a bit when someone inside the closet worked the door-handle. But with the clip in the lock, the tumblers wouldn't engage and the handle couldn't turn. Kelly put out a foot against the far wall and pushed herself back into place.

"Is he _in there_?" Mike squeaked.

"Shhh!"

The door thumped again, not like someone hitting it with a fist but like someone throwing himself against it. Kelly stretched out both feet and her toes barely touched the far wall. She got what leverage she could and braced herself against the door. In the quiet, Mike could hear panting: his own, from the stairs, and Kelly's breaths as her thighs began to strain, and a third set of lungs, like a bellows. Stunned, Mike pointed at the door and Kelly nodded. Her eyes were big.

"He told me to," she whispered. "To lock him in and not let him out."

"And the sound deck?" Unconscious of his own actions, Mike came over and put his hands on it. Kelly was sitting on a mass of knobs, surely an uncomfortable position. Her combat boots had already broken off one knob.

"I'm not big enough to move a desk," she said, and relaxed her legs. Now Mike's weight was the only thing keeping it against the door. Harvey had not thumped it again, but he still might. In the closet, his breathing had gone lower and thicker in his throat, a frustrated groan.

"He told you to?" Mike asked, still not processing all this new information properly.

Kelly put a finger to her lips, but too late: Harvey had heard him. Through the door came Harvey's voice: "Mike? Mike, let me out."

"He said not to," Kelly warned, sotto voce. "He made me swear."

"Let me out, Mike."

"Harvey, do you know what's going on?"

"I'm fine," he babbled. "I am totally fine."

"You've been assaulted," said Mike. "I think it was that douchebag from Love-Eez. Jessica's handling the situation downstairs."

"My shoulder hurts," said Harvey.

"You've been banging it on the door," Kelly reminded him.

"I usually like tall women," Harvey told her. That curious little lilt in his voice as he transitioned into flirting was so obvious once you knew it. Not _competent_ flirting, all things considered, but. "Donna said she'd teach you about heels."

"That's a compliment," Mike told her, his face red.

"That's a seriously impaired man, and my _boss_ , whom I've locked in a closet."

Mike was rubbed his eyes in frustration. "Okay, yes, point. How did he know?"

Harvey banged on the door (probably with his fist, not his bruised shoulder) and muttered, "Mike's tall."

They ignored him. Kelly bit her lip and fussed with some of the knobs on the sound deck. "I'm not sure. He leered at me and I was kind of, you know, uh oh here we go. He can loom, like, I'm not sure whether that's something he does on purpose or if he just doesn't realize, but he was looming. And then he blinked like something had smacked him between the eyes, and he got really pale, and he handed me his wallet, phone, and keys and told me to lock him up."

" _You_ can walk in heels," Harvey was telling Mike. His breathing was heavy. 

Kelly said, "He told me to go get Ms. Pearson, actually, but I wasn't sure that paperclip was gonna hold, so I just --"

"No, yeah, good choice. She's going to have to call the cops eventually." As that came out of Mike's mouth, he realized what it would mean. He lowered his voice. "And Harvey would pretty much rather die than be caught pants-down like that. He would never --"

"I thought you said he was a womanizer," Kelly hissed back.

"He is a stupidly ethical womanizer," Mike corrected her. "And stupidly ethical womanizers do not live down even the appearance of sexual assault."

He watched Kelly mouth that phrase: _sexual assault_. "But he didn't even touch me. He's the one who's been --"

Something on Mike's face caused her to shut up. He was busy thinking about how the carnivorous testosterone veldt of Harvey's client base would react to the idea that the Best Closer in New York wasn't as untouchable as he let on, but as Kelly fell silent Mike began to realize what it would mean to _him_ , to Harvey. Not many people got close enough even to speculate about that. Mike liked to consider himself one of the few.

"You're the greatest," Harvey interjected. "Both yous. Both of you."

Kelly bit her lip. "So we're keeping him locked in the closet till he's himself again?"

"How long does Love-Eez last?"

"At normal dosage, an hour," she said at once. "Two, to be safe?"

Mike sighed. "I'll hold onto the sound deck. Can you go find some shims to hold it in place? We've got a while to wait."

"You're not going to tell Ms. Pearson he's here?"

"You didn't," said Mike, simply.

Kelly stared at him for a long moment, and turned without a word. She emerged from an office a few minutes later with a pair of high heels, one in each hand. They were patent red, with pointy toes. Mike was on the cusp of asking incredulously whether this was a good time for fashion when she crouched and jammed the shoes, one each, under the front wheels of the sound deck.

"You're a genius," said Mike, and stepped away from the suddenly immobile deck.

"I like to think so," said Kelly.

*

Jessica and her minions had plenty to do downstairs. Mike sent Kelly to peer down from the mezzanine from time to time, just to be sure they hadn't sent everyone home yet (in which case, if they were smart, they'd realize who was missing). He called down to Rachel and let her know that he was all right, and everyone was accounted for.

"That's two fewer than showed up, plus you," she accused.

Mike said, "Yes, I can count, and hopefully Jessica cannot." 

"They're humping the walls," Rachel choked out, in what might be a laugh but was probably strangled shock.

"Which is why I'm glad I'm not downstairs right now," Mike told her. And between them they left it at that.

The rest was patience and wits. Rather than listen to Harvey pant and mumble, Mike and Kelly took turns asking for stories of greatness. It was not too difficult to steer such an addled man into flights of discourse about the glorious deals he'd closed, and to steer him away from any emotive blurts he might otherwise be inspired to make. They sat on the floor on the opposite side of the hall, Kelly using Harvey's phone to read up on the organic chemistry of Ecstasy while she half-listened. Mike thought to himself how beneficial it was that, already at this early stage in her career, she'd learned not to pay attention to self-aggrandizement from a senior partner. Harvey wasn't usually quite so drunkenly forward about it, but plenty of his colleagues were. Kelly just nodded along and frowned at the little screen in front of her.

"Mike," said Harvey, his voice gone hoarse from nonstop talking, "I'm proud of you."

Mike smiled to himself. "I know," he told the closet door.

Harvey fell silent after that, just a few taps (fingertips now, not even a fist) on the door and then nothing. 

Mike listened to the quiet and could hear no panting. Kelly turned the phone so Mike could see the time: almost an hour. 

They counted off another ten minutes, and then another beyond that. The sun was finally setting, and the sliver of mezzanine Mike could see from his position in the hallway was rosy pink compared to the stark while lights above him. The only sound was the air-conditioning system. The two of them sat tense side by side and waited for Harvey to start back up again, and he didn't.

Well, someone had to do it. Mike got up off the floor and stood in front of the sound deck, still listening, Kelly at his shoulder. Together they pulled the red patent leather shoes out from under the wheels (they were ruined) and tossed them aside. The closet made no sound in reaction to the clatter of the heels along the hallway. Its wheels freed, the sound deck was easily pushed out of the way. They stood side by side in front of the closed door.

Like children they grasped hands in the moment before Mike reached out and removed the paperclip from the keyhole. It slid loose with a rattle, but the door handle didn't move immediately. It did not move at all under Mike's anticipating hand. In the end, he had to turn it himself.

The door swung wide slowly on smooth hinges and Mike realized for the first time that the closet had no light source. Harvey had spent at least an hour in the dark, and that might have explained why he lay slumped against one wall with a hand raised up against the light. Kelly crowded in next to Mike and peered under his arm and together they assessed him in silence.

His hair was messy and his tie halfway down his chest and he'd lost his cufflinks somewhere on the floor. His belt was undone. He looked like he'd half-tried to strip off his shirt and gotten tangled up in it; his jacket was inside-out around his feet. Harvey squinted at them, bleary and exhausted. 

"It's over," Mike told him, because nobody else was going to. "The effects should be gone by now."

Harvey did not even grunt. The hand he'd lifted against the light in his eyes came down again and covered his face. It was trembling. Mike couldn't tell whether that meant Harvey was himself again and was ashamed, or still wasn't himself yet. His shoulders heaved as he took a breath.

The awkward pause was interrupted by a perky, pushy voice from right next to Mike. "Come on, upsy-daisy," said Kelly, in that tone employed by the parents of sleepy teenagers the world over. "Time to get going." She reached out a hand and joshed Harvey on the shoulder (he listed to one side at the contact, out of balance) and then held that hand on front of him as an invitation to help him stand.

It could have been a disaster. Kelly was small enough Harvey could have taken her hand and thrown her over his shoulder. He didn't; he let himself look at that hand for a long puzzled moment and then took hold of it. She yanked on his arm cheerfully and he let her pull him up to a standing position. He staggered a little and Mike stepped forward, just to be something to lean on, just so Kelly wouldn't have to take all Harvey's weight if he suddenly toppled over. Mike's hand hovered at Harvey's elbow, shy of invasion, and then with the resolve Harvey himself seemed to lack, he got a grip on Harvey's arm and helped him stay upright.

"That's the ticket," said Kelly, and started the three of them down the hall. Harvey said nothing. He did not even try for a snide remark about being treated like a child.

*

Harvey sat on the edge of the sink, his shoulder against the wall, while Mike began to straighten up his clothes. "Uh, Kelly, could you go ahead and clean up the hallway?" he asked, as he noted Harvey's half-unzipped trousers. While he waited for her to go, he untied Harvey's tie and folded it into his own pocket.

"I did raise two brothers," she said under her breath, but didn't object any further. The bathroom door fell shut and Mike zipped Harvey back up and re-did his belt. Harvey kept his head against the cool tiled wall and his eyes closed. Mike buttoned up Harvey's shirt and made a weak attempt at tucking it in. He lifted each of Harvey's hands in turn onto his shoulder to be able to fold back the sleeves, and then put those hands down again. Harvey let him do everything without objection. He swallowed once or twice.

"Find me a cup," Mike said, as Kelly opened the door again. "Dixie cup, coffee cup, something." She scuttled away on her next errand. Mike pulled a paper towel and wet it in the sink and wiped Harvey's cheeks with it.

His neck was flushed, shameful red. Mike ignored that color and mopped up the sweat from Harvey's forehead and then licked his fingers. He combed Harvey's hair carefully, but with only fingers it wasn't going to look like it was supposed to. Harvey, cured of vanity by some horrible miracle, let Mike fuss at him without comment.

The cup Kelly came back with was an oversized coffee mug, white with _I ;D New York_ on it in red letters. She filled it with water and handed it to Harvey, who took it without eye-contact.

"Cufflinks," she said, and gave them to Mike. "Jacket." 

She'd turned it right-side out and folded it, but the wrinkles and dust all over it showed pretty clearly that it wasn't wearable. Mike wasn't sure yet how to approach the inevitable. Eventually they would all have to go downstairs and rejoin Jessica and the rest of the firm, but Mike had been kind of hoping that Harvey would have a plan for that. Harvey, clearly, did not yet have a plan.

Harvey took a swallow of water, and then coughed. Mike caught the hand with the mug and steadied it against spilling. "Take it slow," he soothed, and immediately Harvey pulled away, frowning. Harvey was not a man to be soothed, not overtly. Mike tried a different tack: "You're not the only --"

"Just fuck off for a minute," Harvey interrupted. His gaze flicked around the room, at Mike, at Mike's hand on his, at Kelly waiting in wary silence outside of arm's reach. Mike let go of Harvey and watched as the man pulled himself painfully together.

In his head Mike counted out one minute exactly before he spoke. "It was in the ice. Anybody who had a mixed drink was affected, and that's more than half of the summer associates. I counted just shy of 35 downstairs, but Jessica was still chasing them down one by one and tying them up with their own neckties."

"She doesn't know we're up here," Kelly supplied. "Mike said not to."

That stubborn jaw set itself. Harvey took a breath, set down the mug, and stood up under his own power. He was steadier now, back to something recognizable: he looked like he'd pulled an all-nighter, not like he'd been completely out of his head less than an hour ago. He looked like he was preparing himself for his own execution. "She's got to find out eventually," he said, stony.

Mike ran through a couple of alternate scenarios just in case. Could they find an unguarded exit and claim they'd left a long time ago? The sound deck was evidence enough that _something_ had happened, and anyway Rachel knew Mike was still in the vicinity. An intensely-fought game of Scrabble was not a cover story that was going to work.

"She's got to find out _something_ ," said Kelly suddenly. Her shoulders were hunched and her dark eyes bright. Harvey glared at her and she did not even flinch. "You said half the associates were affected, right?"

She reached up and pulled out the elastic from her hair and mussed herself up. Mike said, "Yeah, but --" But she hadn't even gotten a drink of any kind. But she was going to pretend to -- "Oh."

Harvey continued to glare at her as she took off her suit jacket and threw it on the floor and stomped on it. She handed things to Mike: Harvey's wallet, his keys, his phone, and Mike handed them to Harvey. Kelly pushed a bra strap out from under the fabric of her sleeveless top and let it lie all wrong on the point of her shoulder. "So I'm gonna go into hysterics in a second and you can carry me down the stairs. You _can_ carry me, right?"

She said it to Harvey, who stood there with his arms by his sides and his mouth open. Of course Harvey could carry her, small as she was. She slapped her own cheeks briskly and came up to stand at Harvey's shoulder.

The quickest flicker of reluctance crossed his face and then he was in it: he raised his arms in time for her to jump into them. Her arm around his neck marred the line of his collar, as if wrestling with himself in a closet hadn't done that already. As she'd said she would, Kelly burst into tears, and rested her head against the chest of the senior partner she hardly knew.

His necktie was gone (folded in Mike's pocket), so she grabbed a handful of the button placket on his dress shirt. Mike watched the muscles in Harvey's forearms flex behind her shoulders and knees and then, because nobody was arguing with the arrangement, Mike picked up Kelly's jacket and held open the bathroom door.

He led them to the stairs, and Harvey followed in silence. He carried her down, tension in his neck and back, and Kelly sobbed and clung to him. Mike counted the steps out loud to him (surely he couldn't see his own feet), and surveyed the scene below: Kelly was not the only one in tears. The victims were no longer zip-tied to the railings, but were hunched in various states of dishevelment on folding chairs and on a bench dragged out from the restroom area and a few on the floor. Emergency workers moved surely but without haste around the room. Rachel looked up from where she sat (consoling Jerry Stanislaus, head in hands) and made eye-contact with Mike before moving on to the sight behind him. She blanched a little, and got up to come meet them at the base of the stairs.

Jessica stood in the middle of the ground floor, hands on hips, towering several inches over someone with a notepad who was almost certainly a police officer. Well, that was unavoidable, but with luck she'd got the situation entirely in hand (so to speak) before she'd called it in. It was going to be humiliating enough as it was.

"Hi again," Mike said to Rachel, and handed her the two wrinkled jackets in his hands. "Things go okay down here?"

"Define okay," she answered drily, and led them to a spot of free space on one of the benches by the restroom. She leaned in to mutter to Mike's ear alone: "You could have said she'd been drugged too."

"We were trying to salvage her pride," said Mike, gingerly hoping Harvey hadn't heard that, or heard the irony in it. He'd always been bad at conning Rachel, and was getting no better at it.

Kelly, however, conned like a pro: all snot and sweat and heaving, hitching breaths. The front of Harvey's collar was wet with her tears. Harvey sat down across from where Louis Litt lay sleeping (exhausted no doubt, and with his thumb in his mouth), and Kelly sat in his lap with her face tucked into her senior partner's neck. Jessica excused herself and crossed the room to see what was what, mouth doubtful. Harvey did not raise his head to her.

"He saved me," gasped Kelly, not to Jessica. She said it to Harvey's adam's apple if to anyone at all, and grasped his neck even more tightly. Harvey was a gentleman: eyes down, he stroked the back of her hand and let her cry. "I was, I was --" she stuttered between mortified sobs, "-- and he kept me safe."

Under Jessica's pitiless gaze, Mike spun out the half-truth. "I found them upstairs. There was a closet and we didn't have any zip-ties. We improvised."

"Nothing happened?" she asked him in a low voice.

"Nothing at all," Mike assured her solemnly. 

Jessica eyed him for a long moment. Maybe she didn't buy it, but the massive hassle all around her took precedence. With an expression that said she doubted Mike's ability to spell long words, Jessica turned and went, back to the cops who needed her attention (and possibly her threats to keep them from calling the press).

Mike breathed out and watched her go. Kelly wound down slowly to sniffles, recovering incrementally, nestled like a child in Harvey's arms. He still stroked her hand absently, and rested that stubborn jaw of his on the top of Kelly's head. Every once in a while she reached up and stroked his hand in return, without a word.

And Mike had been worried whether they would be able to trust each other. Teddy Bilzerian was going to get stomped like a ripe tomato (and with luck, Mike would be allowed to watch), and would never realize what he and his wonder drug had wrought.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I did that. I wrote the "sex pollen" square for HC_Bingo in a real-world universe. Sorry.


End file.
